The World’s Best Places To Live 2009

Each year, Mercer Consulting assembles its ranking of 215 cities worldwide, based on a quality of living point-scoring index that uses New York City as a base comparison.The rankings take into consideration 10 key categories and 39 separate criteria, ranging from the political environment and health considerations to recreation and consumer goods; statistics which are collected via Mercer’s Worldwide Quality of Living Survey. Because quality of living can be rather subjective, Mercer has defined

Each year, Mercer Consulting assembles its ranking of 215 cities worldwide, based on a quality of living point-scoring index that uses New York City as a base comparison.

The rankings take into consideration 10 key categories and 39 separate criteria, ranging from the political environment and health considerations to recreation and consumer goods; statistics which are collected via Mercer’s Worldwide Quality of Living Survey. Because quality of living can be rather subjective, Mercer has defined it as “aspects everyone would probably agree on as being important for having good quality of living standards” from which many of these individual criteria are derived.

From Mercer’s results last year, the most dramatic changes are occurring at the top, with four of the top five cities shifting ranks, but the rest of the top 15 remaining the same. Out of US cities, the only ones breaking into the top 30 worldwide are Honolulu (29) and San Francisco (30). From Asia, only Singapore (26) breaks the top 30.

So, where are the World’s best cities to live? Click ahead to find out!